As Good As Dead Page 3
Such early victories were short-lived. Around 0130 on May 6, more Japanese landing barges began coming ashore. The Japanese landed three light tanks around from Monkey Point, on Corregidor’s north beach, and within hours, they had captured Denver Battery. Nielsen and his companions snatched up Springfields, grenades, Browning automatic rifles, three-inch trench mortars, and machine guns as Americans were ordered to help defend the beach. Infantry-trained since boot camp, Nielsen had little concern when asked to abandon his artillery piece in favor of a rifle.6
The Marine officer in charge of the Monkey Point station finally decided that it was futile to maintain his radio gang. Around 0300, the lieutenant ordered Joe Barta’s team to haul a machine gun down toward the front line at the beach. Barta had never seen the machine gun before and had no training on how to use it, but his group ran ahead through the clatter of gunfire and pounding artillery explosions. By the time they arrived, four of his comrades had disappeared, leaving Barta and the remaining radioman to carry their machine gun from one place to another until a marine asked to take charge of it. Barta made his way over to Battery Keyes, a rapid-fire three-incher pointed toward distant Fort Hughes.7
The Americans fought valiantly on the Rock during the early stages of the Japanese landings, inflicting twenty-one hundred enemy casualties on the beaches, including more than nine hundred killed. General Homma grew worried that his whole amphibious force might be wiped out, but by midmorning of May 6, defenders like Nielsen, Pacheco, and Elliott could only do so much with rifles and hand grenades. Nearby, three Japanese tanks were grinding steadily toward the main entrance to Malinta Tunnel, and General Wainwright fretted they might wreak a heavy death toll if their seventy-five-millimeter cannons could be fired within the tunnels.8
Shortly after 1000 on May 6, Wainwright told his staff that his troops could not hold out much longer. He sent word to General MacArthur in Australia that he was ordering a cease-fire at noon. He also had his radio operator send out a farewell message to President Roosevelt that he would go “with broken heart and head bowed in sadness” to arrange for a surrender of the fortified islands of Manila Bay. “There is a limit of human endurance, and that point has long been passed,” he said.9
“With profound regret and continued pride in my gallant troops, I go to meet the Japanese commander,” Wainwright detailed in his last transmission. “Good-bye, Mr. President.”
*
JOE BARTA SLIPPED over the back wall of Battery Keyes and made his way toward Malinta Hill. By 1100, he had reached the tunnel, where he found other radiomen—having sent the last messages from Corregidor—in the process of destroying all communications equipment. General Wainwright’s surrender message was broadcast three times between 1100 and 1230, during which time the Marine 4th Regiment burned its flag and the national colors to prevent their capture by the enemy.
“Execute Pontiac” was the code phrase issued instructing soldiers to destroy their weapons and surrender. Smitty reluctantly gave up his post at the .50-caliber machine gun. An older marine near him who had fought in the First World War became emotional and teary-eyed as the order to destroy weapons was passed. “I never thought I’d see the day when a bunch of damn marines would throw in the rag and just quit!” he groused.10
By 1330 on May 6, Skinny Wainwright had given up the fight. He and five staff officers soon marched before the Japanese command to negotiate terms. He offered to surrender four of the fortified islands in Manila Bay—Corregidor, Fort Drum, Fort Frank, and Fort Hughes. Colonel Motto Nakyama—the same officer who had taken General King’s surrender on Bataan a month earlier—insisted that no surrender would be accepted that did not include all U.S. forces in the Philippines.11
Wainwright’s staff was taken by boat to General Homma’s headquarters at Cabcaben on Bataan, where Wainwright was informed that hostilities against American troops would continue unless an unconditional surrender was agreed upon. His troops had little chance of holding out much longer, so Wainwright was forced to do the unthinkable and sign the surrender documents. Tears filled his eyes as he was taken under guard shortly after midnight.12
The surrender of so many troops proved to be mass confusion. Japanese soldiers soon made their way into the underground hospital and the jam-packed Malinta Tunnel, where thousands of soldiers had gathered once their guns were wrecked. One Imperial Japanese Army soldier wearing horn-rimmed glasses moved through, demanding that the Americans give up their rings, watches, and other valuables.13
Joe Barta’s radio gang was marched out of the tunnel that afternoon and put to work carrying artillery, ammunition, and supplies from Japanese landing barges to the beach. Once that task was complete, Barta was moved to Corregidor’s own tiny Kindley Field, where he spent his next four days working to get the airfield back into commission so that his captors could use it.14
Beginning on the afternoon of May 6, all of Corregidor’s defenders—Marine, Army, Navy, Army Air Corps, and Filipino soldiers—were ordered to gather at the 92nd Maintenance Garage near Monkey Point. The small garage included a concrete ramp that extended into the ocean, a landing area for Catalina PBY flying boats. The area was devoid of any shade, far from the most suitable spot for more than eleven thousand defenders to surrender their weapons and be held. Packed in like cattle, the men were soon cooking in the blistering sun.
With no food or water available, the wounded suffered greatly. Able-bodied men constructed crude shelters from battle debris and blankets. During the next few days, several thousand more military personnel were shuttled to the maintenance garage area as they were rounded up from the other surrendered island fortresses in Manila Bay.
*
HANDSOME AND HOT-TEMPERED, Mac McDole was emotionally and physically spent by the time he was forced to surrender at Fort Hughes on Caballo Island. The twenty-one-year-old marine had been shuffled about since the Japanese initiated their assault on the Philippines. For the last few months, he had helped man a machine-gun nest at Fort Hughes, but now after a seemingly endless standoff against an overpowering enemy, hoping daily for reinforcements that never arrived, he was subjected to the humiliation of destroying his own weapons. His gun crew drained the hydraulic oil from the fourteen-inch rifles, emptied the water from their water-cooled .50-calibers, and fired all of the weapons until their barrels burned out. Mac took one last look at his Marine-issued Springfield Model 1903 rifle. He knew it intimately, including its serial number 24109. Then he tossed it into the bay.15
Japanese motor launches reached Fort Hughes that afternoon and began taking American prisoners. Mac and the rest placed their hands on top of their heads, walked to the shoreline, and surrendered. He was herded onto an overcrowded launch and taken on the short ride to Corregidor, where he was shocked at the scene before him. In an area that would scarcely constitute one block in a major American city, some seven thousand Americans and nine thousand Filipinos were separated and kept under guard on the concrete PBY landing ramp.
The Japanese took down name, rank, and serial number from each prisoner. As the information was recorded, a Japanese soldier searched each man. Fearful of losing his high school ring, Mac quickly shoved it into his mouth. He stepped up to the table and offered his basic information to the Japanese guard: “Glenn W. McDole, Corporal, United States Marine Corps, serial number three-oh-one-oh-five-one.” Three guards removed his watch and confiscated his wallet.
Angry about losing his family photos, he yelled, “Damn it! Give me that back!” He was struck from behind with a club that dropped him to his knees. He thought briefly of fighting back, until he noticed three more Japanese soldiers with billy clubs smiling at him. Mac stood up, dusted himself off, and walked toward the prisoner-holding area. He felt some relief that his ring was still in his mouth. These bastards will not take away my pride or my spirit, he thought.16
*
GENE NIELSEN’S PRIMARY concern was water. Like most of the others, he had been forced to surrender not only his weapons b
ut also his canteens.17
Corregidor was close enough to the equator that the heat was relentless—compounded by standing on concrete all day. The weeks of constant shelling had destroyed most of the water lines. At night, there was barely enough room for the now sixteen thousand men to even lie down in their containment area, which measured only about fifteen hundred yards by eight hundred yards. Severe thirst during the day replaced sleep issues at night. Near the 92nd Garage area, a wide bomb crater filled with fresh rainwater. It was difficult to reach at first, but the Americans soon found it to be their only source of drinking water. Nielsen joined the line of men that soon trod a well-worn path to the water hole.
During the next three days, the men were given nothing to eat. The stench of sweat, human excrement, and rotting corpses hung in the air. Straddle ditches were dug to help with sanitation, but the exposed trenches reeked of feces and soon began to spread dysentery to the prisoners. The area where the Americans were held, including the ditches, was marked off by a single boundary wire. Gene Nielsen went right under the wire to defecate one day, forgetting all about the warnings. He had scarcely stepped across the line when a Japanese machine gun opened up from a nearby ridge. The gunfire missed him by only a few yards.18
Sergeant Doug Bogue of the 4th Marine Regiment was resolute in his intent to stay alive. After the third day, Colonel Paul D. Bunker attempted to organize the men, and he was permitted to send out details in search of provisions. Bogue was quick to volunteer, and he obtained his first food and water in days while out on a work detail with 150 other men. They were forced to help carry wounded Japanese soldiers as far as two miles from distant beaches into the Malinta Tunnel hospital, and then help bury their dead. The American fatalities, left decomposing on the beach for two days, were denied proper funerals. Some bodies were piled and burned, while others were unceremoniously dumped into shallow trenches. If a hole was just deep enough for one corpse, five would be jammed in. No dog tags were allowed to be removed to later identify the dead.19
American soldiers—from officers to the lowest ranking—were viciously abused without bias. The Japanese made it known that the lowest Japanese private was far better than the highest-ranking American officer. Military protocol began to disintegrate. One serviceman told his commander to go to hell. The officer reported the man to the Japanese, who had the serviceman shot to death on the spot.20
Corregidor became a special kind of hell for Doug Bogue. He had known since childhood that he wanted to be a U.S. Marine, but this was not at all how he had envisioned the life of the glorious warriors of his dreams. By early May, Bogue was grimy, weary, smelly, and unshaven; though seven years a marine, he was forced to carry out filthy work that the Japanese infantry refused to do. One afternoon, when his work party was approaching McKinley Field, guards pulled ten men from the rear of their detail. The Americans were tied to nearby trees and used for bayonet and sword practice. Bogue and the other men watched as their fellow servicemen were slashed, hacked, and run through with swords.
The long work hours in the tropical sun took their toll on men who suffered from malnutrition and dehydration. The open latrines were overflowing, swarming with flies that spread dysentery to the prisoners. After three days of such conditions, Bogue contracted the disease. There was no chance for him to go to a hospital in spite of his severe illness. A Navy physician advised him to help carry other sick men to the hospital, where he at least would have the chance to contact someone who could treat him. Bogue managed to find a U.S. Army doctor who confirmed that he did have amoebic dysentery, and he was admitted to the Malinta hospital for the next two weeks for treatment.21
Mac McDole received his first food—a can of Carnation milk—after three days of wasting away near the maintenance garage. The former 185-pound athlete had been dropping weight fast by the time he shared that meager ration with two other soldiers. His mood took an upturn that day when he spotted two of his closest friends from the base basketball team, Roy Henderson and Willie Smith. Henderson, like Smitty, had been raised in a rural East Texas farming community. Henderson told his friends how troubled he had been to give up the fight—the hardest thing he had done in his life was to lay down his weapon and surrender. The three marines were soon assigned to work details, stacking sun-bloated carcasses and gathering scrap metal that would later be melted down in Japan to help their war effort.
Suffering and death continued on the old seaplane ramp for seventeen days. On May 23, the Japanese passed the word that the prisoners were to move to the dock area at Bottomside for transfer the next day to better facilities in Manila. The starving men could only wonder how much improved the conditions would be.
3
PASSAGE TO PALAWAN
CORPORAL WILLIE BALCHUS was eager for change, even if he knew nothing of what it would be. Seventeen days of cooking in the open sun on the concrete containment area had caused his lean five-foot-eight frame to grow even thinner. He had endured the final weeks of the assault on Corregidor as a member of the 60th Coast Artillery Regiment on I Battery. Now the twenty-year-old Pennsylvanian, his scraggly brown hair well beyond Army regulation, joined thousands of other broken men in a slow shuffle toward the island’s south docks.
Only three years before, Army life had seemed a good choice to William Joseph Balchus. He had quit school after the eighth grade to go to work, and by the time he was seventeen, his parents allowed him to join the service in hopes of establishing a career. But now, on May 24, 1942, Balchus was nothing more than a number, a prisoner without rights being pushed and prodded along by shouting Japanese guards.
Ten harbor launches were waiting at Bottomside’s south dock to move the American and Filipino prisoners, about a hundred per trip, from the Rock to three Japanese troop transport ships anchored in the south channel of Manila Bay. In the Corregidor hospital, everyone able to walk was ordered to return to the main camp at the maintenance garage. Doug Bogue, still recovering from endless diarrhea and vomiting caused by amoebic dysentery, staggered toward Bottomside in the blistering afternoon heat. Bogue became irritated as he watched Japanese sailors and soldiers strip the prisoners of leftover valuables as they moved them to the ships. Captain John Wright Jr. wrote in his diary of the Japanese crews: “They slapped faces, kicked shins, shoved groups of men until they fell down, then got together and laughed.”1
Aboard a transport, Bogue saw in the distance that the Japanese Rising Sun flag had replaced Old Glory atop their former hillside base. The thousands of men crammed like cargo onto the ships included Bogue, Balchus, Ernie Koblos, Bruce Elliott, Gene Nielsen, Beto Pacheco, Roy Henderson, Mo Deal, Joe Barta, and Willie Smith. Some were shoved into the holds and left to sweat it out after the hatches were closed, while others were packed topside on decks so crowded men could not even sit down. The following day, May 25, the transports moved across the bay to a point just south of Manila opposite Nichols Field.
There would be no easy debarking by pulling into the Manila docks. Instead, the ships anchored about a half mile offshore, where LST-type landing barges moved the POWs from the vessels to the beach and lowered their ramps for the men to exit. The water was anywhere from waist deep to eight feet, depending on where the ramps were dropped.2
Gene Nielsen moved out onto the LST ramp and paused to gauge the water depth. Anyone who hesitated was jabbed with bayonets by Japanese guards, or had his head smashed with a rifle butt. They’re really enjoying this, Nielsen thought angrily. Mac McDole made it ashore with Smitty and Roy Henderson, where they were greeted by a horde of screaming soldiers.3
Their clothes were soaking wet as they were made to march in columns four abreast, either barefoot or in squishing shoes filled with beach sand. The Americans and Filipinos were paraded down Dewey Boulevard, the bayfront main highway named after famous Admiral George Dewey, who sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in 1898. Some Japanese soldiers rode vehicles to help herd their prisoners, while other guards were on horseback as they alternately walk
ed, cantered, trotted, and walked again. The net effect kept Army veteran Francis Galligan off pace all day, forcing him to jog at times to keep from being stepped on by horses.4
The men realized they were being marched through the streets of Manila as a propaganda maneuver for the Japanese to show off the crushed Allied military. The Filipino citizens felt pity, but those who rushed out to throw food to the marching prisoners were quickly beaten back by Japanese guards who drew sabers. The midday heat caused some men to fall out from dehydration, previous wounds, or sickness. McDole and Smitty tried to help carry some of the fallen as long as their energy held out, but the six-mile march took hours longer than it should have as the Japanese paraded their human prizes on a circuitous route through Manila. Dewey Boulevard soon ran red with blood as Japanese cavalrymen shot or ran sabers through those who stopped to rest on the curbsides.5
Their destination, McDole learned, was the old Bilibid Prison, established in 1865 by the Spanish colonial government as the first national penitentiary of the Philippines. The correctional facility, originally known as Carcel y Presidio, was rumored to be the equivalent of America’s Alcatraz. The fact that the Americans and their fellow Filipinos were now being marched into this notorious prison spoke volumes to McDole: The Japanese considered them no better than the worst murderers, rapists, and thieves the jail was built to contain.
*
THOSE WHO SURVIVED the grueling march entered a seventeen-acre complex surrounded by solid mason walls. A guard tower stood at the center of Bilibid Prison, with cell blocks spreading out from the tower like spokes on a wheel. The sick and wounded were taken into a makeshift hospital area while the rest of Corregidor’s survivors were left outside. Water was available in the yard from only two faucets, from which the men had to wait in long lines to drink or fill their canteens.
At least the first meal at Bilibid was an improvement. Each man received a baseball-size rice ball, with no meat or flavoring. During the previous two weeks, most men had survived on only one-third of a can of Carnation milk per day. Stocky Mac McDole had already shed quite a few pounds when he decided in the Bilibid prison yard to make a pact with Roy Henderson and Smitty. “What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine,” they agreed. The marines pledged that they would share any water, food, or other supplies with one another as long as their prisoner of war ordeal should continue.6